Excerpts from a poem I'm working on.

A man and a woman lay by each other in bed. The man: “I love you. Forever and ever, I will.” She blinks.

A woman and a man walk hand in hand through the park.Woman: “I love you. Forever and ever, I will.”Man: “Uh.”

In a 1939, a Nazi Gauleiter (District Leader) and his Jewish mistress lay together in bed.Mistress: “I love you. Forever and ever, I will.” Then, the wife walked in.Two weeks later, soldiers gassed the wife to death in a gas chamber.

A man eats dinner with his brother.Man: “I love you, forever and ever, I will.”The brother punches the man, and calls him a faggot.

A woman sits with her sister. Christmas.Woman: “I love you, forever and ever, I will.”Two day later, the sister removes $500 from the woman’s bank account, and escapes into New Jersey.

A man and his foster son sit in the living room, and play a football video game.The man: “I love you, forever and ever, I will.”The Orphan later steals the foster father’s girlfriend.

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They kneaded the thigh, their breaths heavy and warm and wet. Their breaths swirled. A cup of water boiled and the steam

waved over you. The touch was like a rag rubbed over your chest. His breathing, theirs--wet, from the throat. They moaned from the throat. They made little jokes, and rubbed, and breathed, and coughed, and moaned, and made another little joke, and breathed, breathed, breathed.

They washed their hands, and closed the door behind them. Your father played poker in the dining room. Your mother slept on the couch in the living room.

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Our enemies kneaded us. They pounded us flat on a pan. They sliced us out with a cookie-cutter in the shape of people. They flipped us out and left us in the over for 9 minutes, temperature 350 degrees Fahrenheit. They left us to cool on a windowsill. They decorated us with icing. They gave me 3 eyes, and you five nipples. They gave you a frown, and rested a smile on my stomach. “Delicious!” Hours later, at 8:43pm, we plopped into the toilet.

Because what should be ours shall be ours. We’ve waited longer than a cold night in which our knuckles fall to white, chipped skin. We have waited so long that we ignore the beggar asking for 80 cents. We’ve been lonely for so long that we hope for others to live alone too. We bathe in our victories. We bump into people on the street and do not say “excuse me.” We curse when we get a problem wrong on the quiz, and punch the wall when a stranger calls us a “bitch” in the hallway. We count the times they cursed us, we write the number in our journals. We sigh because the Iraq War has yet to become WWIII.

We have forgotten the names of our aunts and uncles, and we refuse to call people we’ve only known for a week. We imagine people talk about us behind our backs, and we expect that tomorrow, the sun will emit yellow, and the moon will resemble a man’s face, and it will rain, or it will not. It snows, or the sun shines. Someone shoots someone else, or someone robs someone else. Someone emerges from the womb, and someone slips on the wedding ring. The news begins, and the moon dissolves in the light. The news begins, and the sun disappears behind the house. The stars hover in place for centuries. Shit smells like shit and flowers like flowers, and flowers dipped in shit smell like shit. The alarm will snooze.

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